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Necrot – Blood Offerings (2017)REVIEW

Despite the plentiful buzz surrounding Necrot’s debut full-length I hadn’t tracked down ‘Blood Offerings’ until now. I was familiar with them after having several people recommend their first two demos for ‘Demo of the Year’ lists I did back in 2012 and 2013. I consider ‘Into the Labyrinth’ one of the better new old school death metal demos of the decade not in terms of innovation (there is none) but for its stellar sound and punchy 90’s death metal riffing. I typically have to hand it to the Scandinavian boys to produce that type of quality and chuggy-riff surfing. Necrot’s demo compilation was fantastic and gave hope for old school death metal fanatics still grieving the loss of promising bands like Ascended, the odd absence of Necrovation, while established doofuses like Obituary and Purtenance continue to be embarrassing beyond belief. Death metal needed some heroes in 2017, or at the very least some releases to prove the old ways still hold up. I don’t think anyone stayed more true to the heart of death metal than Necrot this year.

It’s hard to pin down what causes more casual death metal fans to latch onto generally average sounding or ‘par’ old school death metal releases and it almost always boils down to production sound and the ability of the band to make a good impression across their first three songs. ‘Blood Offerings’ needs about fifteen minutes of hysterics and riff-massaging to build full strength and their death metal machine just kills after that. The meaty center of the album is a fusion of ‘Mental Funeral’ style crypt-hopping and the best Slayer-ized brutality this side of Deicide‘s ‘Legion’ with countless neck-snapping riffs. ‘Blood Offerings’ ends up both genre exemplar and stylistically transcendent because they’ve written music that doesn’t cry out for direct comparison within a very well defined wheelhouse. That grey area is really difficult to dig through and it took me a few days to point towards Bolt Thrower‘s ‘Realm of Chaos’ for the “bones” of the record while guitar compositions take more from late 80’s pit-thrash and lean into that first Necrophobic album’s mosh-friendly ‘Hell Awaits’ style.

‘Blood Offerings’ shares some small amount of DNA with blood brothers Acephalix and in terms of sheer riffs, totally pukes out twice as many banging chug-vignettes. What I’d suggest is that Acephalix put out a more effective and complete feeling album with a lot of the same general nuances; which only has me leaning that way because I personally prefer the ‘Left Hand Path’ ethos of ‘Decreation’. Necrot are peerless in terms of riff-metal in 2017 and the sheer physicality and variety they’ve pumped into this album is worthy of endless praise. Songs like “Empty Hands”, “Shadows and Light” and “Beneath” offer some of the most genuine instant riff gratification and heaviness that most bands rocking an old school death metal sound couldn’t dream of.